Cellular telephone use is rapidly expanding throughout the world and particularly in the United States. Many telephone companies offer cellular telephone services in various regions of the country and, unfortunately, this type of communication is subject to fraud and theft by unauthorized users. During cellular telephone operation, cellular telephones transmit a mobile identification number (MIN) identifying the cellular network to which the cellular telephone belongs and an electronic serial number (ESN) identifying the particular cellular telephone being used. The identification numbers are often intercepted by unauthorized individuals who use the identification information associated with the cellular telephones to clone the telephones.
In order to combat cellular telephone fraud, cellular telephone service providers employ various methods and technologies to authenticate, fingerprint, or otherwise protect the services offered by the companies from unauthorized use. The methods employed by the service providers vary, particularly for different regions of the country. The providers find it difficult to manage the various types of technologies deployed and the information associated with the technologies for each of the regions serviced and for the large number of customers serviced. The information that plays a significant role in making management decisions with respect to the technology or servicing customer service calls is contained in the cellular switches of the various regions where cellular service is provided. For example, when a cellular telephone call is initiated through a cellular telephone switch, data packets containing information regarding the authentication, electronic fingerprinting or other security measures are collected at the switches through which the cellular telephone calls are processed. While this information is valuable to service providers in making deployment decisions about certain technologies or servicing customers, obtaining accurate, current information from the switches is often difficult.
Information regarding the various technologies deployed for cellular telephone service and tracking information regarding particular telephone calls are gathered and calculated manually from cellular switches by individuals responsible for the collection of information for particular service regions. Information retrieved by these individuals is typically imparted to customer service representatives or those responsible for generating reports by using rudimentary techniques, such as e-mail or memorandums.
These rudimentary techniques of tracking information that is pertinent to the overall management of cellular operations that expand over various regions of a country have numerous disadvantages. One disadvantage is the reliability of the information. Particularly, a summation of the information for a particular service provider is dependent upon multiple contacts who need to update the information regularly. With multiple contacts responsible for updating the information, obtaining consistent and timely reports is often difficult. Furthermore, if the individual responsible for obtaining the data from the cellular switches and creating the reports is not available, the integrity or timeliness of the information processed by another may be substandard. The collection of the information and organization of the information by the individuals is a difficult, time consuming and tedious task. Additionally, the collected information must be distributed to the proper departments or individuals responsible for analyzing or viewing the information. Thus, consolidating reports from various sources for analysis by different individuals or departments of a telephone company can be difficult. Due to the time consuming process of gathering the information and interpreting the switch information, current consistent information regarding the cellular service is often not readily available to departments or individuals of the company who need information to resolve troubleshooting or specific technology issues.
Thus, there is a need for a method or system for ensuring accurate and reliable retrieval and reporting of information from cellular telephone switches for use in analyzing cellular telephone technology and data deployed in various regions of the country serviced by a service provider.